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Bitcoins and Mobile App Integrations

What is a Bitcoin?

This relatively new “currency” has been popping up all over the web and for starters, many don’t even know how to explain what it is, let alone how and where to use it. A recent New York Times article did a great job of explaining:

“One type of a digital math-based asset that is issued by, and transmitted through, an open source, cryptographic protocol platform known as the bitcoin network. In more plain terms, a bitcoin is digital money that you cannot hold, but can be bought and sold online in exchange for traditional currencies like dollars and yen.”

To use bitcoins, users need to choose and download a wallet, to make transactions. A wallet provides users with a unique bitcoin address to both send and receive coins from other bitcoin users. All wallets are compatible with each other and can be used both on and offline. So it seems bitcoins can be used like any other form of online payment and therefore can be easily integrated into mobile apps.

Bitcoins as Payment – Mobile App Integrations

Being that bitcoins are considered another form of payment, they can easily be integrated into mobile apps that both require payment or accept payment. For example Tech Crunch reported earlier this year that Gyft, a mobile gift card company, partnered with BitPay to start accepting bitcoins within the app.

Omnis Studio provides mobile and web solutions that enable developers to build once but deploy to virtually any platform – if an app requires an exchange of currency, bitcoins could most definitely be integrated as an option. And as with many new innovations in technology, the various iterations are seemingly endless but bitcoins do seem an interesting way to both spend and receive money either integrated into apps or as a standalone third-party application.